Fortunes of War

12

By working throughout the long evening and short night, the officers and enlisted men of Major Chernov’s squadron at the Zeya Air Base got six planes into flyable condition. The planes were ready a half hour before the true dawn. Chernov had the best one armed with cannon shells and four AA-10 missiles. Chernov had ordered five of his pilots, the five most senior, to fly to Chita, five hundred nautical miles west, well beyond range of the Zeros. Now he slapped them on the back, watched them strap in, start engines, and taxi. They took off one by one, white-hot exhausts accelerating faster and faster and faster. The roar of their engines filled the night with a deep, rolling thunder. The fighters kept their exterior lights off and did not bother to rendezvous. They retracted their wheels as they came out of burner and turned west. Still, it was several minutes before the roar of the last plane had faded. Yan Chernov stood beside the sixth plane and listened until even the background moan was gone and all he could hear were the insects chirping and singing, as they had done on this steppe every summer since the world was young. The senior warrant officer came over. They shook hands. “Roll the trucks now,” Chernov said. “Get the men to Chita, if possible. If not, go as far west as you can. The Japanese may attack at dawn, hoping to catch us sleeping.” He glanced at his watch. The night at these latitudes was only two hours long. “Do you really think so, Major?”

“There is a chance they’ll strike as soon as there is light enough.”

“Why today?”

“I hurt them yesterday. They should have hit us days ago. Now they will.”

“I suppose.”

Chernov shrugged. “This morning or soon.”

“I’ve already sent the other trucks on. I’ll wait and go with your linesmen.”

Chernov held out his hand. The warrant office took it. The major smoked the last of his cigarettes as he eyed the northeastern sky, waiting for the first glow of dawn. He had been rationing himself, to make the cigarettes last. When these were gone…, well, without money … The night was not really dark. At this latitude summer night could accurately be described as a deep twilight. He could see stars, so the sky was clear and visibility good. Chernov had grown up in a village dozens of miles from the nearest town, far from urban light pollution, so stars were old friends. He had finished his last cigarette and was strolling around the airplane, touching it, caressing it, trying to stay calm and focused, when the stars in the east began to fade. He climbed to the cockpit and the senior linesman helped him strap in. “Take care of yourself, sir.”

“Peace and friendship, Sergeant,” the pilot said, repeating the traditional phrase. He sat alone in the cockpit, watching the sky turn pale. He had no fuel to waste, yet if he delayed his takeoff too long, the Japanese would catch him on the ground. If they came. He could wait no longer. He gave the signal to the linesman. Seven minutes later, sitting on the end of the runway, he ran through his takeoff checklist. Everything looked good. The radio didn’t work, so he didn’t turn it on. The ECM gear did work. He watched the telltale lights intently, listened with the volume turned up to maximum. And he saw and heard nothing. Maybe the Japanese weren’t coming. Maybe he would be shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Be shot by that officious desk general who had called yesterday wanting the brigadier. A sick joke, that. The stars were going fast. Yan Chernov released the brakes and smoothly shoved the throttles forward to the stops. Pressures good, fuel flow fine, rpm and tailpipe temperatures coming up nicely … Now he lit the burners. The white light of the afterburners split the darkness like newborn stars. The acceleration pushed him back into the seat. Despite the fact the Sukhoi-27 was a big plane, weighing about 44,000 pounds this morning, it accelerated quickly. Soon the trim lifted the nose-wheel off the pavement. He steadied her there, flew her off. Gear up, then out of burner as soon as possible. When everything was up and in, he turned to the southwest. The most probable direction for an approach by enemy attackers was southeast. If he could make another side attack before they spotted him, he might be able to … He leveled at ten thousand feet and let the speed build to.8 Mach. At this low altitude, fuel flow was high. Nervous, he glanced again at his watch. He had been airborne for six minutes. After ten minutes of flight, he began a long, slow 180-degree turn. His head was on a swivel, searching the early-morning sky in every direction, especially to the south and east. He was tempted to tap his radar for one sweep, just to see, but he decided it was too dangerous. The sky to the northeast was a pale blue. Visibility excellent, easily fifty miles. It’s just that small airplanes more than a few miles away arc exceedingly difficult to see in the great va/s of the sky, he thought. And this early, with the earth below still dark, the task was almost impossible— unless the planes were in that northeast quadrant, silhouetted against the growing light. He tried to resist the temptation to stare toward the northeast. They would probably approach the base from the southwest, from the darkness!

He searched futilely in all directions. Nothing. Maybe the Japanese aren’t coming. What a fucked-up war! It’s every man for himself, comrades. We have fucked up our country so badly that we have nothing to sustain our soldiers with. It’s poor, polluted, filled with starving people and radioactive waste. Chernov did a 360-degree circle, then another one. He was sweating. Well, this idea was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should have gone with the others to Chita, talked to the people at headquarters from a telephone there, set up a liaison with a tanker squadron. Su-27’s should be operated from a secure, well-defended base, one properly supplied with fuel and ordnance and spare parts, one beyond the range of the Japanese. Then, with the help of airborne tankers, the fighters could be launched on combat missions against the enemy here at Zeya or even at Khabarovsk. Why dawn? Why did he think they would come at dawn?

He admitted to himself that he didn’t know the answer to that question. He just sensed it. A dawn attack seemed to fit. He glanced at his fuel gauge. Then his watch. Keep the eyes moving, look at that sky, look for the tiniest speck that isn’t supposed to be there. His ECM chirped. Just a chirp and a flash of light. He eyed the panel, waiting for the light to flash again, waiting for a strobe to indicate direction. Nothing. He looked outside. He couldn’t maintain a watch on the damned panel. Maybe a Japanese pilot had given in to the temptation that Chernov had resisted— maybe he had tickled his radar, let it sweep once, just to verify that…, to verify … Three tiny specks, way out there, against the blue of the dawn. The sun was just ready to pop over the earth’s rim, and above the growing light in the sky he could see moving black specks. Three. No, four. Five. Six. Moving to the west. They would pass well north of Chernov’s position. S. Six. Damn! Why did there have to be so many?

He turned to the southwest. If he came out of the darkest part of the sky while they were working over the base, he would be difficult to acquire visually. They would turn their radars on as soon as they suspected he was around. Still, if he got first shot … Yah Chernov eased the throttles forward, right against the stops. He wasn’t ready for afterburner yet. Full power without the burners gave him.95 Mach. Now the ECM panel lit up. The Zeros were looking for planes over Zeya. He eased the nose into a descent, let the plane accelerate, retrimming constantly. Mach 1, now 1.1, now 1.2. Still at full military power. He made the turn to go back toward the base, checked the handheld GPS. Master armament switch on. Four missiles selected, lights red. They were armed and ready. Each squeeze of the trigger on the stick would fire one. He leveled at five hundred feet, just above the earth. Down to Mach 1.1, decelerating because the engines could not hold him supersonic without the thrust of the afterburners. If only he had a modern plane, like an F-22. Or even a Zero.

Fifteen miles. Fourteen. Thirteen — a nautical mile every six seconds. He glanced again at the ECM panel. All ahead, nothing behind. Nothing behind that was radiating. He took a ragged breath, tried to calm himself. His heart felt like a trip-hammer in his chest. Ten miles. Nine. Eight … At seven miles he pulled the nose up five degrees and squeezed off an AA-10 missile. Then a second, third, and fourth, as fast as he could pull the trigger. These fire-and-forget missiles had active radar homing. With luck, two or three of them would find targets. He opened the afterburners full. The acceleration pushed him back into his seat. His fingers flicked the switches to select “Gun” on the armament panel. The Japanese must have picked up the radar emissions of the inbound missiles. Now he flipped the switch that caused his radar to transmit. The scope blossomed. He was still looking outside, through the gunsight, when he saw the first flash — a missile hit. Now another. And a third. The fourth missile must have missed. Yan Chernov glanced at the radar scope, quickly turned one of the knobs to adjust the gain. A plane on the left, heading slightly away. He looked through the gunsight. There! At eleven o’clock. A transport! Parachutes in the air! Paratroops. The Japanese were taking the field. All that registered in Chernov’s mind without conscious thought. He was concentrating on the transport. He was going to get a deflection shot. He was doing Mach 1.4; the other plane, probably two hundred knots max. He jabbed at the rudder, adjusted the stick with both hands to get the nose where he wanted it. He squeezed the trigger, and the gun erupted, hosing fire. It was over in two seconds. The stream of white-hot lead was in front of the enemy transport, then, with the gentlest touch on the right rudder, stitched it from nose to tail. The four engine turboprop blew up and Chernov shot just behind the expanding fireball, still accelerating. Mach 1.7 now, all the Sukhoi would give him in this thick air. His eyes registered the sight of more parachutes, but he was busy flying. The enemy radars were emitting in his rear quadrant now. He let the nose sag in order to get down against the earth.

As the seconds ticked by, he felt his shoulder blades tighten. Sure enough, the Missile light under the gunsight began to flash. Level thirty meters above the ground, Chernov punched out chaff, rolled the plane ninety degrees to the left, and pulled the stick into his gut until the meter read 7 Go’s. Sweat stung his eyes. The horizon was right there, a line through his gunsight. He fought the temptation to look over his left shoulder, concentrated instead on keeping the horizon below the dot in the gunsight that represented his flight path. If that dot dropped below the horizon, he would be into the ground in seconds, and very, very dead. A missile went over his right shoulder, exploded harmlessly after it was by. The next one went off just under the plane, a sickening thud that slammed the plane hard. He rolled right, through level, into a right turn. Less G now, because the Missile light was off. So was the ECM panel. It shouldn’t be. The Japanese were still back there, perhaps trying to catch him. If he could keep his speed up, they never would. He needed to extend out. For the first time, he glanced at his system gauges, the gauges that told him of his steed’s health. Uh-oh. Hydraulic pressure was dropping; he had three yellow warning lights and a red. The red was a generator. Oh, God! The ECM panel was silent because it lost power when one of the generators dropped off the line. Just then another missile exploded above him: a flash, a pop, followed by a rattle of shrapnel against the fuselage. He leveled the wings. Despite the low altitude, he risked a look aft. Nothing visible behind. Still Mach 1.6 on the airspeed indicator. Fuel trailing away behind the right wing. He could just see the fuel boiling off the wing in the rearview mirror. A glance at the gauge for fuel in the right wing. Almost empty. Another gentle left turn. He consulted the GPS. Fifteen miles from the base, going northeast. Yan Chernov kept the left wing down about ten degrees, let the nose slowly come toward the north, then the northwest. It seemed as if the wing was almost in the grass of the steppe. The sensation of speed was overpowering, sublime; he was orbiting the planet at a distance of five meters. He watched intently ahead, focused with all his being, tugging the plane over rises and rolling hills. If the wing kissed the earth now, he would never know it: He would be dead before the sensation registered. He leveled the wings, heading west. Are the Zeros chasing? They must not have the fuel to chase. Oil pressure to the right engine was dropping quickly. Chernov came out of burner. When he did, the right rpm began dropping. He pulled the throttle to idle cutoff, secured the fuel flow. He still had one engine, one generator. At fifty miles from the base, he took off his oxygen mask and swabbed the sweat from his eyes and face. He checked the fuel again. Must be another leak somewhere. He had enough for thirty more minutes of flight, if he didn’t have any fuel leaks. With leaks, less. But he was alive.

Pavel Saratov walked the periscope around slowly. The attack scope protruded just inches above the surface of the sea, which fortunately was calm today. Still, a wave occasionally washed over the glass. When it did he paused until he could see again, then continued his sweep. Visibility was about ten miles, he estimated. There were three ships in view, two going into Tokyo Bay, one leaving. Container ships, one about thirty thousand tons, the other two larger. Not a warship in sight. Not even a patrol boat. He flipped the handle so that he could scan the sky. Overcast in all directions. No airplanes. Back to the ships. Two going northeast, up the channel into the Uraga Strait entrance to Tokyo Bay, one coming out. The ship nearest the land was too far away and opening the distance, but if he hurried, he could probably get firing solutions on the other two and send them to the bottom. Now. He had ten torpedoes. He should have had a dozen, which would have been a full load, but there had been only eleven fueled torpedoes in the naval armory, and he had drained the fuel from one to sell for food. These were not new, modern torpedoes — they were the old 53–65 antiship, wake-homing torpedoes, the first of the Soviet wake-homers. Saratov had loaded the ten torpedoes aboard Admiral Kolchak because naval regulations required that the boat be armed whenever it went to sea. Not that anyone gave a damn. Saratov loaded the torpedoes anyway. It seemed to him that if he didn’t obey naval regulations, he had no right to demand obedience from the men. He had always feared the implications if he and the men one day just chose not to obey. Would they then be merely a bunch of burns looking for a meal…, seagoing burns? Pirates?

He pulled his head back from the scope. The members of the attack team were looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to call ranges and bearings that they could put into the attack computer. “No warships,” he told Askold, the executive officer. Askold was from the Ukraine, but he had chosen the Russian NAVY seventeen years ago, when the union collapsed. The Ukrainian NAVY looked like a good place to starve. He grinned at Saratov now. “Let’s blast away and get the hell out.”

“There should be warships,” Saratov said, turning his attention back to the periscope. “The entrance to Tokyo Bay, for God’s sake.”

“Are you sure there are no submarines about?” Askold asked the sonar operator, who shook his head no. He looked insulted. If he had heard anything that might be a submarine amid the cacophony of screw noises around the entrance to this bay, he would have said so. “Give me another few turns on the motors, Chief,” Saratov ordered. The boat was going so slowly that the bow and stern planes were ineffective, which caused the submarine to bob up and down, making the scope rise too far out of the water and then dip under. “Aye aye, sir.”

After one more complete look around, Saratov ordered the scope lowered. He turned to the chart on the table. “There should be patrol boats, destroyers, an airplane, something.”

Had he lucked into an interlude when the pickets guarding the entrance to the bay were off watch? If so, he should strike quickly and make his escape. Askold stood beside him, staring at the chart. “Ten torpedoes … What are we going to do afterward?” He asked the question softly, actually in a whisper. “I don’t know,” Saratov murmured. “Assuming we survive the afterward.”

“They’ve left Tokyo Bay unguarded.”

Askold pinched his nose. “There must be an antisubmarine net across the entrance. That at the very least.”

“There are no picket boats to open and close it. Two freighters are going in now, one coming out. It’s wide open.”

“How arrogant are these people?”

“We had four dieselstelectric boats at sea in the Pacific when the war started. All the nuke boats are junk. If you were Japanese, wouldn’t you put your antisubmarine forces around your invasion fleet?”

“Hmm, the invasion fleet. That is the target we were assigned,” Askold said, pretending to be thinking aloud. “I wonder if headquarters assigned all four of our boats to Vlad?”

“Perhaps,” Askold said slowly. “Do you think—“

“I only know that there are no antisubmarine forces here,” Saratov interrupted. “Not even a rowboat.”

Saratov motioned for the periscope. When it was up, he made another complete sweep, then turned so that he was looking at the entrance to Tokyo Bay. The entrance was several miles wide. The bay was huge, over a hundred square miles. One thing was certain: The Japanese would never expect a Russian sub to go in there. Hell, they weren’t even expecting an enemy sub here at the entrance. There was a huge refinery on the west side of the bay at Yokosuka, near the naval base. North, up the west coast of the bay, was Yokohama, the commercial shipping port. The main anchorage at Yokohama would be full of tankers, bulk freighters, container ships. Ten torpedoes — six were in the tubes, all of which were in the bow. This class of boat had no stern tubes. He also had four shoulder-fired RPG-9 antitank rockets that he had obtained in a trade a few years back. The rockets had two-kilo warheads, which would punch a hole in any tank on earth, but they weren’t ship killers. The boat had no deck gun, of course. There hadn’t been a deck gun on a Soviet submarine since the last one was removed in the early 1950’s. Deck guns made too much noise when the submarine was submerged and were of limited utility when surfaced. Still, in a crowded anchorage, with the sailors taking their time, aiming at big, well-lit, stationary targets at point-blank range, a gun certainly would be nice. This boat was equipped with tubes to launch four surface-to-air missiles. The tubes were in the sail, and they were empty. Saratov hadn’t seen a missile in years. The two demolition experts and their plastique — he had forgotten about them. “Down scope.”

The captain surveyed the expectant faces…, so eager, so trusting!

The faith of these fools!

Saratov turned back to the chart. After studying it for a moment, he pointed with a finger. “XO, let’s head eastward at slow speed. After dark, we’ll surface and recharge the batteries.”

“Yes, sir.” Askold reached for the parallel ruler. “Sonar, I want you to listen carefully this afternoon. Listen for destroyers, patrol boats, anything that isn’t a freighter or fishing smack. Let’s see what tonight brings.”

He looked at his watch. Two in the afternoon. “At three, I want to see all officers in the wardroom.”

The army truck came along the paved highway at a good rate of speed. There wasn’t much traffic, only a few trucks, and almost all of them going west to escape the invaders. Yan Chernov sat on a rock beside the highway, watching the trucks come and go. He had been bleeding from a cut on his arm, but he had torn a strip off his undershirt and bound it up, and now the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Somehow he had also strained his right shoulder in the ejection, although nothing seemed to be broken or ripped. The shoulder ached fiercely; he moved it anyway, trying to work out the soreness. God, he was tired. He was tempted to stretch out beside the road and sleep. A bleak landscape. The breeze from the west carried clouds. The clouds obscured the sun now and the air was cool. He was walking around to keep warm when one of the trucks flying by slammed on its brakes and stopped a hundred meters beyond him. Yan Chernov picked up his helmet and survival vest and walked toward the truck. His senior warrant officer got down from the cab, trotted toward Chernov. He stopped, saluted, then pounded Chernov on the back.